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Re: “The changing face of professors: As adjunct facilities continue to grow, so does disparity with tenured teachers,” Opinion, June 16:

Thank you for the article about adjunct college instruction. I worked in this capacity at the junior college and university levels. My secret joke was that cleaning staff have better jobs than adjuncts, essentially temps with graduate degrees. Unlike janitors and housekeepers, adjuncts receive no benefits or job security.

As students sign up for classes, administrators assign them to regular faculty members, then may hire adjuncts if the need arises. As no one knows in advance how many students will enroll, adjuncts, in my experience, cannot make plans. Sometimes, a course is not assigned until the day it begins, or even after. (Once I started teaching a class two weeks after it began, with no preparation. I named it the “hot potato” because two professors had started, then dumped it. )

One aspect astounded me when first hearing about it. Students often drop classes and may get partial refunds if they do this early. There is a cutoff, called the “census date,” about two weeks after the start of classes. If too many drop before this date and too few remain, the class will be canceled and the instructors receive no pay for the days worked.

My research university teaching experience resembled a swimming instructor tossing a beginner into a river full of crocodiles. Nobody gave pointers on how to teach. The junior college did help inexperienced teachers with seminars and websites.

The use of adjuncts allows flexibility and saves the institution from having to hire full-time people, a costly process. On occasion, people with special skills may be hired to teach. These people would have some bargaining power.

Research universities sometimes have a different use for adjuncts. Grant money that professors receive to perform research gets split among equipment purchases, university overhead, graduate students (the worker bees,) and such. None of it can go to raise the professor's salary. A chunk of the money, however, can free the professor from part or all of his or her teaching load in a process called “buying out of a class.” An adjunct takes the professor's classes, but gets paid only part of the buyout money. The rest goes to the institution.

Adjunct teaching does have advantages for some. Such instructors are spared many duties of full-time ones, including advising; curriculum planning; textbook selection; grant writing; and faculty meetings, which many professors say they hate.

My last junior college offer was to teach a single class, which met four times a week for an hour each day, and required a 60-mile round trip drive. I turned it down and never checked email there again. I have heard that adjunct teaching often does not help a person get tenure; it might look bad on the vita. Publishing research papers is what matters. I hope that people will take work other than adjunct teaching, when possible. Reducing the supply will make this workforce more valued.